The Empire Trilogy (68 page)

“Yes, I see what you mean,” agreed Harry cautiously.

“I say, what's all this?”

Two looming banks of earth had rolled out of the darkness to engulf them like a tidal wave as they approached the gates.

“Drains,” said Harry stiffly.

“Drains!”

“Well, actually, they're not really drains. They're fortifications in case the Residency has to be defended. It's the Collector's idea, you know.” Harry's tone was disapproving. The military at Captainganj took a dim view of the Collector's earthworks, a view which Harry shared. Some people, Harry knew, would have put it more bluntly and said that the Collector had gone mad. Everybody at Captainganj believed that there was no danger at all, of course, but that what danger there
was
, would be maximized by the Collector's display of trepidation. All the same, the Collector wielded the supreme authority in Krishnapur, an authority even higher than that of General Jackson. The General could do what he liked at Captainganj but that was the limit of his estate; his authority was cushioned all around by that of the Collector whose empire ran to the horizon in every direction. In Harry's view, the Collector's authority resembled in many ways that of a Roman emperor; however fallible a Collector might be as a human being, as a representative of the Company he commanded respect. It was in the nature of things that sometimes a Roman emperor, or a Collector, would go mad, insist on promoting his horse to be a general, and would have to be humoured; such a danger exists in every rigid hierarchy. But the feeling at Captainganj was that it could not have happened at a worse time; the military were being made to look ridiculous. Word of the Collector's behaviour in Calcutta had already come back to the barracks, together with mocking comments from brother officers at other stations. Nobody likes ridicule, even when undeserved, but to a soldier it is like a bed of fiery coals. The Residency was not their province, but people would think, or pretend to think, that it was; people would say they were “croaking”! The Collector's timorous behaviour would rub off on
them
.

And yet, although Harry thought all this, he could not bring himself to say it...at least, not to Fleury; in private with a brother officer, perhaps, he might allow himself to rant against the Collector, but with a stranger, even one who was almost a cousin, it would have offended his sense of honour. So the most he could permit himself about the drains was a tone of disapproval...but in any case, by now they had left them behind and their boots were clattering on the steps of the portico.

The Residency was lamplit at this time of night. The marble staircase which faced Fleury as he entered gave him the delicious sensation of entering a familiar and civilized house; his eyes, which had been starved of such nourishment since he had left Calcutta, greedily followed the swerve of its bannister until it curled into itself like a ram's horn at the bottom. Other Europeans besides Fleury had feasted their eyes on this staircase; in Calcutta one might not have noticed it particularly, but here in the Krishnapur cantonment all the other houses were of one storey; to be able to go upstairs was a luxury available only to the Collector and his guests. Indeed, the only other dwelling in the neighbourhood which could boast a staircase was the palace of the Maharajah of Krishnapur; not that this was much use to the English community, because, although he had a fine son who had been educated in Calcutta by English tutors, the old Maharajah himself was eccentric, libidinous, and spoke no English.

Two chandeliers hung over the long walnut dining table and their rainbow glints were reflected in its polished surface. Fleury's spirits had been instantly restored, thanks partly to the civilized atmosphere of the Residency, partly to the Collector's “drains” which had reminded him what an entertaining character his host was. He began to look around eagerly for further signs of eccentricity. At the same time he tried to sort out the names of all the people he had just been introduced to. He had been greeted warmly by Dr and Mrs Dunstaple, and inaudibly by Louise who was now standing a little way back from the table, fair and pale, her long golden curls flowing out like a bow-wave from the parting on top of her head, slender fingers resting absently on...well, on what looked like a machine of some kind. “Hello, what have we here?” Fleury crowed inwardly. “A machine in the dining-room, how deuced peculiar!” He peered at it more closely, causing Louise to release it from her tender fingers and drift away, ignoring him. It was a rectangular metal box with a funnel at one end and cog-wheels on both sides. A faint fragrance of lemon verbena stole up behind him. He turned to find the Collector watching him moodily.

“It's a gorse bruiser,” he declared heavily, before Fleury had a chance to enquire. “What's it for? It's to enable gorse to be fed to cattle. The idea is to soften the hard points of the prickles where the nutritive juices are contained. They say that once gorse has been passed through this machine any herbivore will eat it with avidity.”

Fleury surveyed the engine with a polite and studious expression, aware that the Collector was watching him.

“Ah, now here's the Padre to say Grace.”

No sooner had the meal begun than conversation of the most civilized sort began to flow around the table. Fleury appeared to join in this conversation: he nodded sagely, frowned, smiled, and stroked his chin thoughtfully at intervals, but he was so hungry that his mind could think of nothing but the dishes which followed each other over the table...the fried fish in batter that glowed like barley sugar, the curried fowl seasoned with lime juice, coriander, cumin and garlic, the tender roast kid and mint sauce. As these dishes were placed before him, occasional disjointed snatches of conversation loomed up at him through the fog of his gluttony, stared at him like strangers, and vanished again.

“
Humani generis progressus
...I quote the official catalogue of the Exhibition,” came the Collector's voice eerily. “But I fear I must translate, Doctor, for this son of yours who has paid more attention to guns and horses than to his books...'The progress of the human race, resulting from the labour of all men, ought to be the final object of the exertion of each individual.”'

But Fleury's base nature whispered that there are times when a man must let the world's problems take care of themselves for a while until, refreshed, he is ready to spring into action again and deal with them. And so he ate on relentlessly.

Only when pudding, in the shape of a cool and creamy mango fool, was placed before him did the fumes of gluttony begin to clear from Fleury's brain and permit him to hear what was being said about “progress”. This was not a topic to interest everyone, however. Harry, for instance, had hardly said a word; like his father at the other end of the table he was clearly not much of a one for abstract conversations. Poor Harry, it had probably never occurred to him that one could make an “adventurous” remark (as he, Fleury, frequently did) or have an “exciting” conversation. He looked rather pale at the moment, no doubt his sprained wrist was troubling him; he should probably not have ridden out to the
dak
bungalow to get that jolting on the way back.

Louise, too, remained silent. In Fleury's view she was quite right to sit there quietly and listen to what the gentlemen had to say, because speaking a great deal in company is not an attractive quality in a young lady. A young lady with strong opinions is even worse. What can be more distressing than to hear a member of the fair sex exclaiming: “In the first place, this...and in the second place, that...” while she chops the air with her fingers and divides whatever you have just been saying into categories? No, a woman's special skill is to listen quietly to what a fellow has to say and thereby create the sort of atmosphere in which good conversation can flourish. So thought Fleury, anyway.

Mrs Hampton, the Padre's wife, did occasionally venture an opinion, as her rank and maturity entitled her to...but she took advantage of her privilege only to support the views of her husband, which no one could object to. Of the other ladies two were remarkably garrulous, or would have been had they not been overawed by Mrs Hampton who kept them severely in check, cutting in firmly each time one of them tried to launch into a silly discourse. One of them, a pretty though rather vulgar person, was Mrs Rayne, the wife of the Opium Agent; the other, even more talkative, was her friend and companion, recently widowed, Mrs Ross.

Now that he had eaten, Fleury was merely waiting for a break in the conversation before voicing his own opinion on progress. It came almost immediately. “If there has been any progress in our century,” he declared with confidence, “it has been less in material than in spiritual matters. Think of the progress from the cynicism and materialism of our grandparents...from a Gibbon to a Keats, from a Voltaire to a Lamartine!”

“I disagree,” replied Mr Rayne with a smile. “It's only in practical matters that one may look for signs of progress. Ideas are always changing, certainly, but who's to say that one is better than another? It is in material things that progress can be clearly seen. I hope you'll forgive me if I mention opium but really one has to go no farther to find progress exemplified. Opium, even more than salt, is a great source of revenue of our own creation and is now more productive than any except the land revenue. And who pays it? Why, John Chinaman...who prefers our opium to any other. That's what I call progress.”

The Collector had been behaving oddly; moody and expansive by turns, perhaps on account of tiredness or of the claret he had drunk, he now suddenly became expansive again. “My dear friends, there's no question at all of a division of importance between the spiritual and the practical. It is the one that imbues the other with purpose...It's the other that provides an indispensable instrument for the one! Mr Rayne, you are perfectly right to mention this increase of revenue from opium but consider for a moment...what is it all
for
? It's not simply to acquire wealth, but to acquire
through
wealth, that superior way of life which we loosely term civilization and which includes so many things, both spiritual and practical...and of the utmost diversity...a system of administering justice impartially on the one hand, works of art unsurpassed in beauty since antique times on the other. The spreading of the Gospel on the one hand, the spreading of the railways on the other. And yet where shall be placed such a phenomenon as the gigantic iron steamship, the
Great Eastern
, which our revered compatriot, Mr Brunel, is at this moment building, and which is soon to subdue the seven seas of the world? For is this not at once a prodigious material triumph and an embodiment, by God's grace, of the spirit of mankind? Mr Rayne, both the poet and the Opium Agent are necessary to our scheme of things. What d'you say, Padre? Am I right?”

Although lightly built, the Reverend Hampton had been a rowing man at Oxford and he retained from those days a healthy and unassuming manner, illuminated by an earnest simplicity of faith which shone through his every word and gesture. In the seething religious atmosphere of Oxford in the Padre's time a man did well to stick to rowing; the Tractarian onslaughts were enough to shake the strongest constitution; it was said that in Oxford even Dr Whateley, now the Archbishop of Dublin, had preached a sermon with one leg dangling out of the pulpit. All the same, the Padre sometimes had a worried look; this was because he was afraid that the duties to which the Lord had called him might prove too much for his strength.

“Mr Hopkins, as you know, I had the privilege like yourself of attending the Great Exhibition which opened in our homeland six years ago almost to this very day. To wander about in that vast building of glass, so immense that the elms it enclosed looked like Christmas trees, was to walk in a wonderland of beauty and of Man's ingenuity...But of all the many marvels it contained there was one in the American section which made a particular impression on me because it seemed to combine so happily both the spiritual and the practical. I am referring to the Floating Church for Seamen from Philadelphia. This unusual construction floated on the twin hulls of two New York clipper ships and was entirely in the Gothic style, with a tower surmounted by a spire...inside, it contained a bishop's chair; outside, it was painted to resemble brown stone. As I looked at it I thought of all the churches built by men throughout the ages and said to myself: ‘There has surely never been a more consummate embodiment of Faith than this.”'

“A splendid example,” agreed the Collector. “A very happy marriage of fact and spirit, of deed and ghost.”

“But no, sir! But no, Padre!” cried Fleury, so vehemently as to startle awake those guests whose minds had wandered during the preceding discussion. All eyes turned towards him and even as he spoke he wondered whether he might not be ever so slightly drunk. “But no, with all respect, that's not it at all! Please consider, Padre, that a church is no more a church because it floats! Would a church be any more of a church if we could hoist it into the skies with a thousand balloons? Only the person capable of listening to the tenderest echoes of his own heart is capable of making that aerial ascent which will unite him with the Eternal. As for your most brilliant engineers, if they don't listen to the voice of their hearts, not a thousand, not a million balloons will be capable of lifting their leaden feet one inch from the earth...” Fleury paused, catching sight of the consternation on the Doctor's face. He did not dare glance at Louise. Somehow he knew she would be displeased. He could have kicked himself now for having blurted out all that about “the tenderest echoes of the heart”...that was the very last line to take with a girl like Louise who enjoyed flirting with officers. He had
meant
to say none of that...he had meant to be blunt and manly and to smile a lot. What a fool he was! As he sat there a random, frightening thought occurred to him: tonight he would have to sleep in the midst of sipping snakes!